Safeguards for spent fuel in an irretrievable storage facility

Ultimately, high-level waste from the reprocessing of German spent fuel, spent light water reactor (LWR) fuel assemblies that will not be reprocessed, and spent THTR-300 fuel will be disposed of in a geologic repository in the Gorleben salt dome, provided it will be licensed; the exploration of the salt dome is under way. Because of its fissile material content, particularly plutonium, the International Atomic Energy Agency will not release spent fuel from safeguards, although the irradiated material will be packaged in huge containers and irretrievably buried in the salt. International safeguards in an irretrievable storage facility will have to be designed accordingly. This paper discusses various safeguards aspects, investigations, and results. Technical aspects were presented in a previous paper